Teaching Tolerance?

It would be nice to think that niceness is improved by education; ignorant people are less nice, e.g. less tolerant, than the educated. But maybe that's not what matters. Does economic freedom lead to greater tolerance?

...the data shows that when a society has impressive scores on property rights security and low inflation ... these characteristics are strongly and positively correlated with tolerance of gays. It’s possible that low inflation, and the behavior of a central bank, are stand-ins for the general trustworthiness of a nation’s government and broader institutions, and such trustworthiness helps foster tolerance....

We are often told that education is an important remedy, yet it does not register as a meaningful factor in the cross-country data in this paper. Higher levels of education simply have not correlated significantly with higher levels of tolerance across countries.

I suppose that "I have a post-secondary degree" ... "I have a PhuD" might translate as "I have learned to absorb, echo and elaborate on whatever my culture/government wanted." That might be it. Sigh.

Community

Lest it be thought that this blog is only about tech, here's a thought on community-building, specifically Breaking Down the Natural Isolation and Insulation of High School Teachers | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

If you wanted to isolate teachers from one another, no better way is to organize the school by grades, have departments, and a daily schedule that leaves little time for teachers before, during, and after classes to work together in a community focused on better teaching and student learning. These structures left unattended insulate and isolate teachers from one another. The dilemma is plain: How to create a community of teachers working toward common goals within a structure and culture dedicated to keeping teachers apart from one another?

Here is a veteran teacher in the sunset of his career with “school smarts” and wisdom gained from decades of experience in a high school who knows that building community begins with knowing who sits next to you.

So every now and then groups of people (teachers, students, both) should have meals together where somebody gets a turn for a few minutes to do a self-introduction, covering specific things that might be a basis for future collaboration or simply friendship. Not complicated, not technical, but something for schools to keep in mind.
Or then again, maybe not.

Telepresence Now

Consumer and Education: Student Attends School Via Robot | Robotics Trends

What's most remarkable is how unremarkable this technology is viewed by his classmates. In a class of 7-year-olds raised on video games, avatars and remote-controlled toys, they don't see a robot. They just see Devon.
Just before class one recent day, a girl leaned toward the robot to tell Devon the joke making the rounds at school: Why did the boy eat his homework? The teacher told him it was a piece of cake.
While making get-well cards for him during a hospital stay last year, his classmates all drew him as a boy, not a bot.

Maybe it's the New Normal, or will be in another decade...

Or then again...

On Learning to Think

I wonder if it's possible for an educational system to encourage actual thought (systematically). I'm thinking about partisanship, here; the way that so many members of a group interpret whatever they see in terms of, well, Who Represents?

most people can't even remember the idiotic things said by people they identify with. Liberals can instantly call to mind this infamous exchange between a Fox News host and Bill Nye, the science guy, about global warming and volcanoes. But how many of them remember the CNN host who asked whether the Russian meteorite had been caused by global warming? Conservatives, meanwhile, all know about the global warming meteorite, but have a much less encyclopedic command of stupid utterances by conservative types.
It isn't, I think, that they don't encounter these stupidities; in fact, whenever one of these stories goes viral, the folks who share a party ID with the speaker generally spend a couple of days getting mad at the other side for blowing this up all out of proportion to its actual relevance.
Rather, it's that we take the stupidity from the other side as representative, and the stupidities from our own side as sui generis.

Maybe education as such has nothing to do with it, or is even counter-productive in that it tends to reward the ability to echo.


Or then again, maybe not.

Social Capital

An addition to the "District Comparisons" page on the Hamilton Central Options website...
On the end-of-the-world solstice (12/21/2012), I see a note about Hamilton as #11 in Forbes' "America's Friendliest Towns:" 11. Hamilton, NY says

Population (2010): 6,690
This tiny historic Central New York town -- home to a village by the same name -- was founded in 1975 as Payne's Settlement. Today it is perhaps best known as the location of prestigious Colgate University. Crime rates are markedly lower than the national average and despite being a college town, the rate of homeownership is more than 60%. The Village Green offers local eateries and merchants as well as some of the area's most historic homes. Neighbors gather for fundraisers, holiday parties, safety awareness events, holiday charities and fitness groups, according to Nextdoor.

Now, it seems that Forbes has confused "1975" with "1795", but otherwise it seems accurate. Is it unChristmassy to note that Morrisville didn't make this list? Hamilton has a lot of social capital to lose...